Everyone is talking about Microsoft's new Windows Phone milestone. It's a big one: The company announced it published a whopping 75,000 new apps for its mobile operating system.
Not bad. If I remember correctly, I don't think Windows Phone had 75,000 apps in total when 2012 started.
Confidence is built by testing and certifying every app and game to help protect customers from malware and viruses. Over the last year we've certified and published over 75,000 new apps and games (more than doubling the catalog size) and over 300,000 app updates. In addition, this year we added the capability for customers to tell us if they have a concern about an app.
It sounds like Microsoft has the manpower to handle a large influx of developer submissions.
But here's the problem: It doesn't matter how big an operating system's app library is. That never mattered. "App selection" isn't about the number of apps available, it's about having the apps people want to use. And Microsoft still can't promise that its Windows Phone users will get the latest and greatest apps with the best features first.
Take a look at the Windows Phone Marketplace today. There's no Pandora (but supposedly it's coming soon). No Dropbox. No Instagram. Even the Facebook app isn't made by Facebook; it's made by Microsoft, so it's missing a lot of the latest features Android and iPhone users enjoy. Then there are apps like Twitter that feel like they haven't been updated in eons, while their Android and iOS counterparts get all the glory.
Now look at the hot new apps that launched this year: Clear. Snapchat. Brewster. Fantastical. All of those apps launched on iPhone first. Some created Android versions shortly after. None are found on Windows Phone.
I talk to app developers all the time and almost all of them tell me the same story. They prefer to make apps for iPhone and Android first because that's where the users are. They don't have anything against Windows Phone, but it's not worth the time and money investment to develop for a platform that has next to no market share.
I like Windows Phone. I think it's a great operating system with massive potential. But it's going to be difficult to convince people to switch to a new platform if they know they're not going to get the best apps.
Is your business still using Windows XP? If so, you're not alone. But, you should also seriously consider moving to a newer operating system. You could just step up to Windows 7, but there's also a pretty strong case to be made for moving to Windows 8—particularly Windows 8 Enterprise.
Assuming you want to move to Windows 8, you then have to decide which version. There are a handful of features that are only available in Windows 8 Enterprise—like Windows To Go—that make it an ideal operating system for organizations that have already embraced, or plan to adopt a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policy.
There are pros and cons to BYOD in general for both the business and the employees. The business is exposing its data and network resources to rogue computers that may contain malware, or could end up lost or stolen and potentially expose sensitive information. The employee is cluttering up their personal PC with software and data they don't own, and have no desire to use outside of a work environment. And, that's just scratching the surface.
Windows To Go is an awesome tool for BYOD because it enables a complete, managed Windows 8 desktop to be booted from a USB thumb drive or external hard drive. The employee can bring in pretty much any laptop hardware they choose, and simply boot using the company-issued Windows To Go.
You can provide a conistent, stable, secure Windows 8 environment for users.
While the employee is at work, they can use the safe, secure Windows 8 environment supplied by the organization. When they shut down and leave, their laptop is exactly as it was before they went to work. Windows To Go takes away most of the downsides associated with BYOD.
An additional benefit is that if any issues are encountered—like a malware infection of some sort—it is simple to just clone a new Windows To Go image and pretend it never happened.
There are some caveats. First, as mentioned above, Windows To Go is only available with Windows 8 Enterprise. Second, Windows To Go requires at least a 32GB USB flash drive, and is only compatible with specific makes and models supported by Microsoft.
There are some features and functions that are not available in Windows To Go—mostly as a means of keeping the virtual Windows 8 environment segregated from the underlying hardware and software on the PC. For example, the internal drives of the PC are disabled from within Windows To Go. The hibernation feature, Windows Recovery Environment, and Windows 8 App Store are also not available by default.
If you're already allowing users to bring their own PCs to work, or you're considering adopting a BYOD policy, you should look closely at what Windows To Go has to offer.
(Reuters) - A major Iranian partner of Huawei Technologies offered to sell at least 1.3 million euros worth of embargoed Hewlett-Packard computer equipment to Iran's largest mobile-phone operator in late 2010, documents show.
China's Huawei, the world's second largest telecommunications equipment maker, says neither it nor its partner, a private company registered in Hong Kong, ultimately provided the HP products to the telecom, Mobile Telecommunication Co of Iran, known as MCI. Nevertheless, the incident provides new evidence of how Chinese companies have been willing to help Iran evade trade sanctions.
The proposed deal also raises new questions about Shenzhen-based Huawei, which recently was criticized by the U.S. House Intelligence Committee for failing to "provide evidence to support its claims that it complies with all international sanctions or U.S. export laws."
At least 13 pages of the proposal to MCI, which involved expanding its subscriber billing system, were marked "Huawei confidential" and carried the company's logo, according to documents seen by Reuters. In a statement to Reuters, Huawei called it a "bidding document" and said one of its "major local partners," Skycom Tech Co Ltd, had submitted it to MCI.
The statement went on to say, "Huawei's business in Iran is in full compliance with all applicable laws and regulations including those of the U.N., U.S. and E.U. This commitment has been carried out and followed strictly by our company. Further, we also require our partners to follow the same commitment and strictly abide by the relevant laws and regulations."
In October, Reuters reported that another Iranian partner of Huawei last year tried to sell embargoed American antenna equipment to Iran's second largest mobile operator, MTN Irancell, in a deal the buyer ultimately rejected. The U.S. antenna manufacturer, CommScope Inc, has an agreement with Huawei in which the Chinese firm can use its products in Huawei systems, according to a CommScope spokesman. He added that his company strives to comply fully with all U.S. laws and sanctions.
Huawei has a similar partnership with HP. In a statement, the Palo Alto, Calif., company said, "HP has an extensive control system in place to ensure our partners and resellers comply with all legal and regulatory requirements involving system security, global trade and customer privacy and the company's relationship with Huawei is no different."
The statement added, "HP's distribution contract terms prohibit the sale of HP products into Iran and require compliance with U.S. and other applicable export laws."
Washington has banned the export of computer equipment to Iran for years. The sanctions are designed to deter Iran from developing nuclear weapons; Iran says its nuclear program is aimed purely at producing domestic energy.
CLOSE LINKS
Huawei and its Iranian partner, Skycom, appear to have very close ties.
An Iranian job recruitment site called Irantalent.com describes Skycom as "a leading telecom solution provider" and goes on to list details that are identical to the way Huawei describes itself on its U.S. website: employee-owned, selling "solutions" used by "45 of the world's top 50 telecom operators" and serving "one-third of the world's population."
On LinkedIn.com, several telecom workers list having worked at "Huawei-skycom" on their resumes. A former Skycom employee said the two companies shared the same headquarters in China. And an Iranian telecom manager who has visited Skycom's office in Tehran said, "Everybody carries Huawei badges."
A Hong Kong accountant whose firm is listed in Skycom registration records as its corporate secretary said Friday he would check with the company to see if anyone would answer questions. Reuters did not hear back.
The proposal to MCI, dated October 2010, would have doubled the capacity of MCI's billing system for prepaid customers. The proposal noted that MCI was "growing fast" and that its current system, provided by Huawei, had "exceeded the system capacity" to handle 20 million prepaid subscribers.
"In order to keep serving (MCI) with high quality, we provide this expansion proposal to support 40M subscribers," the proposal states on a page marked "HUAWEI Confidential."
The proposal makes clear that HP computer servers were an integral part of the "Hardware Installation Design" of the expansion project. Tables listing equipment for MCI facilities at a new site in Tehran and in the city of Shiraz repeatedly reference HP servers under the heading, "Minicomputer Model."
The documents seen by Reuters also include a portion of an equipment price list that carries Huawei's logo and are stamped "SKYCOM IRAN OFFICE." The pages list prices for HP servers, disk arrays and switches, including those that already are "existing" and others that need to be added. The total proposed project price came to 19.9 million euros, including a "one time special discount."
The proposed new HP equipment, which totalled 1.3 million euros, included one server, 20 disk arrays, 22 switches and software. The existing HP equipment included 22 servers, 8 disk arrays and 13 switches, with accompanying prices.
Asked who had provided the existing HP equipment to MCI, Vic Guyang, a Huawei spokesman, said it wasn't Huawei. "We would like to add that the existing hardware equipment belongs to the customer. Huawei does not have information on, or the authority to check the source of the customer's equipment."
Officials with MCI did not respond to requests for comment.
In a series of stories this year, Reuters has documented how China has become a backdoor for Iran to obtain embargoed U.S. computer equipment. In March and April, Reuters reported that China's ZTE Corp, a Huawei competitor, had sold or agreed to sell millions of dollars worth of U.S. computer gear, including HP equipment, to Telecommunication Co of Iran, the country's largest telecommunications firm, and a unit of the consortium that controls TCI.
The articles sparked investigations by the U.S. Commerce Department, the Justice Department and some of the U.S. tech companies. ZTE says it is cooperating with the federal probes.
TCI is the parent company of MCI.
(Additional reporting by Grace Li and Chyen Yee Lee in Hong Kong and Marcus George in Dubai; Edited by Simon Robinson)
Microsoft has done this by adding a feature to UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface), the next generation of BIOS, called secure boot. Its avowed purpose is to prevent rootkits, malicious programs that run before the operating system boots, from running.
So far, so good as even the Free Software Foundation (FSF), an organization with no love for Microsoft recently admitted.
When done correctly, "Secure Boot" is designed to protect against malware by preventing computers from loading unauthorized binary programs when booting. In practice, this means that computers implementing it won't boot unauthorized operating systems -- including initially authorized systems that have been modified without being re-approved.
This could be a feature deserving of the name, as long as the user is able to authorize the programs she wants to use, so she can run free software written and modified by herself or people she trusts. However, we are concerned that Microsoft and hardware manufacturers will implement these boot restrictions in a way that will prevent users from booting anything other than Windows. In this case, we are better off calling the technology Restricted Boot, since such a requirement would be a disastrous restriction on computer users and not a security feature at all.
Therefore, the FSF is urging "all computer makers implementing UEFI's so-called 'Secure Boot' to do it in a way that allows free software operating systems to be installed. To respect user freedom and truly protect user security, manufacturers must either allow computer owners to disable the boot restrictions, or provide a sure-fire way for them to install and run a free software operating system of their choice. We commit that we will neither purchase nor recommend computers that strip users of this critical freedom, and we will actively urge people in our communities to avoid such jailed systems."
That's all well and good, but what in practice is the actual state of getting Linux to run on Windows 8 PCs?
First, by far the easiest way to get Linux running on a Windows 8 PC is to disable Secure Boot. That has two problems. First, it leaves you open to rootkits, which are a real security threat.
The other difficulty with it is that while most major original equipment manufacturers (OEM)s have not made Secure Boot mandatory on PCs, they also haven't made it at all easy to figure out how to turn it off.
There is no universal way to switch Secure Boot off. I can only suggest that before booting your system you open up your firmware's setup. How you'll do that varies according to your PC's motherboard settings. Once in your firmware settings, look for a settings such as "Secure Boot Parameters" or "Boot Mode." After you've found this control, switch it to off or disabled. Or, you may have the option to support legacy or BIOS booting. Any of these choices should let you boot Linux or other operating systems.
The 64-bit version of Ubuntu 12.10 ships with an older version of Shim that's been signed by Microsoft. It should boot out of the box on most systems, but it doesn't have some of the most recent EFI patches that improve compatibility on some machines. Grab it [Ubuntu] here.
Fedora 18
Fedora 18 isn't quite released yet, but the latest 64-bit test builds include a Microsoft signed copy of the current version of Shim, including the MOK functionality described here. Fedora 18 has some additional EFI support patches that have just been merged into mainline, which should improve compatibility on some machines - especially ones with Radeon graphics. It also has improved support for booting on Macs. You can get it [Fedora] here, but do bear in mind that it's a test release.
Sabayon
According to the [Sabayon] wiki, Sabayon now supports UEFI Secure Boot out of the box. I don't know if the current CD images do, though. My understanding is that it's based on the Microsoft signed Shim I discussed here, and you'll have to manually install the key once you've booted the install media. Straightforward enough.
Other distributions
Suse will be using a version of Shim signed by Microsoft, but I don't think it's in any pre-release versions yet. Debian have just merged UEFI support into their installer, but don't have any UEFI Secure Boot support at the moment. I'm not sure what other distributions are planning on doing, but let me know and I'll update the list.
The Linux Foundation loader
The Linux Foundation have still to obtain a signed copy of their bootloader. There's no especially compelling reason to use it - the use case it supports is where you have users who can follow instructions sufficiently to press "y" but not to choose to enroll a key. The most interesting feature it has is the ability to use the MOK database via the usual UEFI LoadImage and StartImage calls, which means bootloaders like gummiboot work. Unfortunately it implements this by hooking into low-level functionality that's not actually required to be present, so relying on this may be somewhat dubious.
As for Window ARM devices, Microsoft has always said that anything running Windows RT must have Secure Boot activated so you don't have the option of turning it off. But, you could still run Linux on it anyway right? Wrong.
Garrett recently explained, "The Microsoft Surface is a fairly attractive bit of tablet hardware, and as a result people have shown interest in running Linux on it. The immediate problem is that (like many ARM devices) it has a locked-down firmware that will only run signed binaries - unlike many other ARM devices, this is implemented using an existing standard (UEFI Secure Boot). Microsoft provide a signing service for UEFI binaries, so it's tempting to think that getting around this restriction would be as simple as taking an existing Linux bootloader, signing it and then booting. Unfortunately Microsoft's signing service signs binaries using a different key (the 'Microsoft Windows UEFI Driver Publisher' key) to the one used to sign Windows, and the Surface doesn't carry that key. Booting Linux on these devices would involve finding a flaw in the firmware and using that to run arbitrary code."
In other words, you'd have to crack Secure Boot itself. While I have no doubt that Secure Boot will be broken in time—there's no such thing as perfect computer security—I also have no doubt that Microsoft will immediately patch any such holes. In short, Surface is a locked-down system, and it's likely to stay that way.
What about the Surface with Windows 8 Pro? This tablet, which is due out in January uses an Intel architecture so, in theory, Microsoft could let you turn Secure Boot off on these devices. In practice, I wouldn't bet a plugged nickel on being able to disable its Secure Boot.
So, where are we? First, forget about running Linux on any Surface device. Someone will eventually hack a way into these tablets, but it will always be a non-starter.
As for Windows 8 PCs, the easiest way to run Linux is to disable Secure Boot. Better still, just buy a PC with Linux already on it or, at least buy a PC without Windows 8. If you do decide to try to run Linux with Secure Boot on a Windows 8 PC... well good-luck to you. It's still not easy, and I'm certain it's going to be troublesome throughout 2013.
For over a year now, every last friday of the month, we've published a fresh issue of TNW Magazine, our tablet only digital magazine. Our first issues were all iPad only. Then the Retina iPad was introduced so we optimized for that. It was a bit more work to optimize for two iPads, but not so much that we minded. And the magazine looked spectacular on the retina screen so it was worth the extra effort.
We use Mag+ software to produce our magazine, and at one point they announced support for the iPhone and asked us to become a launch partner. We jumped at the opportunity and produced a third format, for the iPhone.
With every issue we published we also received a lot of requests for an Android version of the magazine. We had bought a Kindle Fire and a Nexus 7 and Mag+ offered support for both platforms, so we played around with it a bit and ended up publishing a version for Android.
To be honest; it wasn't easy. In theory you simply adjust for a different format and platform and do a new export. But then trouble starts. As one developer put it to us: "You make a beautiful magazine for the iPad, and then you dumb it down for Android'.
That meant removing movies, sound, interactivity and content. But even then we had to deal with frequent crashes, a less intuitive interface and a platform that is even more fragmented than iOS.
Then there was the content. See, we pick movies from the iTunes store that people can download right to their iPads. We pick music the same way and books too. Producing for Android meant that we had to redo all that work because all our content was restricted to the iOS platform. That isn't Android fault, of course, but because the platform is just less developed and robust we had started out with iOS and optimized for that.
All of that wouldn't have been a problem if we had seen a market for our magazine on Android. And we did believe there would be one. We had gotten enough requests for it and had gotten the impression there were thousands of anxious Android tablets owners holding their breath for an Android version of our magazine. Unfortunately we've found out that although Android users are very vocal they aren't very active when it comes to downloading and reading magazines. Or maybe they just don't like our magazine. You never know.
To give you some insight in how little uptake we saw on Android here are some statistics: for every Android user that downloads an Android magazine we have 80 iOS downloads.
Now if it would be as easy as just running an extra export for the other platform this wouldn't be a problem. Turning an iPad retina magazine version into a iPad regular or iPhone version takes a few hours at the most. Turning an iPad magazine into an Android magazine takes 3 to 4 days. We would rather spend those extra 3 or 4 days on making the iPad version mores spectacular with more embedded music and more interactivity.
When we started producing this magazine we figured it would be an experiment and we would take a year to build up an audience and find a format that would work for us. We've tried a lot, failed a lot and learned a lot. And sometimes we try something and find out it doesn't work for us.
We tried an Android magazine, and found out it just isn't worth the effort. Does that mean that Android sucks? Ehm, no, and there is no reason to tell us how cool Android is in the comments, because we understand it is. It just means that with the current state of technology and the way the market is divided we can't afford to invest in it anymore.
This months magazine will be the last Android optimized issue. Starting 2013 we will only publish for iOS.
In call volume works, but not quite well in Speaker mode
MHL output rotates incorrectly to portrait in horizontal mode (but workaround added since alpha 8 for hardware decoded videos or YouTube. Use BSPlayer from Play Store, almost all videos play with it in correct rotation in HWoverlay)
No FM radio app in ROM. But Spirit FM works from market
Key Points to Note
AOKP IceColdJelly custom ROM and the instructions given in this guide are applicable for the international variant - HTC One X model only. It will not work with any other device. Verify your device's model number by navigating to Settings > About Phone.
IBTimes UK advises users to back up apps, important data and settings to prevent data loss while flashing the AOKP IceColdJelly ROM on the HTC One X.
Verify that the correct USB drivers are installed for HTC One X on your computer (download USB drivers)
Enable USB debugging mode on your phone by navigating to Settings > Developer Options (if running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich) or Settings > Applications > Development (if running Android 2.3 Gingerbread). If the device is running Android 4.2 Jelly Bean onboard, then perform the following steps:
o Go to Settings > About Phone.
o Scroll down to the bottom and select "Build number."
o Tap on "Build number" about seven times. Right after the third tap, you will see a dialogue box that says you are only four taps away from being a developer. Continue tapping four (4) more times.
Make sure that your phone has at least 85 percent battery charge to prevent unexpected device shutdown (due to battery drain) while flashing the AOKP IceColdJelly custom ROM on your HTC One X.
Ensure that your phone's bootloader is unlocked, and the device is rooted with ClockworkMod Recovery installed on it.
Make sure that ADB and Fastboot mode are configured on your computer.
The instructions provided in this guide are meant for reference purpose only and do not cover any warranty claims involving device damage or issues arising out of installing the Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean custom firmware. Users are advised to proceed at their own risk.
How to Install Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean on HTC One X with AOKP IceColdJelly ROM
Step 2 - Connect and mount your HTC One X USB mass storage on your computer with original USB cable.
Step 3 - Copy the AOKP IceColdJelly ROM and Google Apps zip files to the root folder on your phone's SD card.
Step 4 - Copy and paste the boot.img file to android-sdk-windowsplatform-tools directory.
Step 5 - Power off your phone and boot into the bootloader/fastboot mode. To do so, switch on the phone by pressing and holding Volume Down and Power buttons together.
Step 7 - Once the device enters Fastboot mode, navigate to android-sdk-windowsplatform-tools directory (on your computer) and launch Command Prompt (press Shift and Right-click > Open Command Prompt).
Step 8 - Type the following command and hit Enter.
fastboot flash boot boot.img
Step 9 - Type the following command and press Enter.
fastboot reboot
Step 10 - Follow the navigational instructions onscreen and select Bootloader, and then enter Recovery mode.
Step 11 - In CWM recovery, wipe data first. Then navigate to Flash zip from SD card option and hit the Power button to select it.
Step 12 - Tap the Power button again and click Choose zip from sdcard.
Step 13 - Use volume keys to navigate to Android 4.2.1 ROM zip file and select it by tapping Power button. Confirm the ROM installation on next screen and the installation will begin.
Step 14 - Once the ROM is installed, hit Go Back and reboot the phone by tapping Reboot System Now in the recovery menu. The phone will automatically reboot and the first boot may take about 5 minutes to complete. So, leave it alone.
Android 4.2.1 AOKP IceColdJelly custom ROM is now installed and running on your HTC One X. Go to Settings > About phone to verify the firmware version installed.
It's been almost impossible to keep up with Microsoft in 2012.
Even after the Windows and Surface and Windows Phone 8 and Xbox Music and Outlook.com launches, the announcements have kept on coming: SkyDrive for Xbox, Halo 4, updates to Skype, the autumn Xbox dashboard update, ramping up Surface production and a quick attack on Google for turning its shipping section into a set of paid ads rather than an actual search.
Microsoft isn't slowing down for the holidays, but what's left for 2013? Quite a lot, including the perennial rumours about a new Xbox - or two or maybe three…
1. Windows Phone 7.8 and 8.5
Despite the on-again, off-again rumours throughout December, the Windows Phone 7.8 update won't come out until early 2013. Windows Phone 7 users get the new Start screen with three sizes of tiles, a version of the Kids Corner child lock, 20 new accent colours and dynamic lock screen wallpaper (with at least the Bing image of the day); Nokia phones also get a ringtone maker, Bluetooth sharing and lenses for the camera that let you remove unwanted objects and make partly animated GIFs.
But what about Windows Phone 8 users? US users are already getting the minor Portico update that fixes some bugs, prioritises Wi-Fi and lets you easily send a text message to explain why you didn't pick up the phone.
That comes to European users early in 2013, but the big update will be Apollo Plus; we're expecting that to be Windows Phone 8.5, to be announced at Mobile World Congress in February – but unless we're also getting Windows Phone 9 next year, we don't expect to see it until the autumn.
2. Office 2013
We know Office 2013 (which is already finished and available for businesses, as well as on Surface RT) will go on sale in 2013, in January or February. Will we see Office for the iPad in 2013 as well? This is another persistent rumour that doesn't necessarily add up; Office isn't the only advantage of Windows RT but it's a key feature.
If we do see Office for iPad it might only be the OneNote and Lync tools - after all, the Word, Excel and PowerPoint Web Apps were rewritten this year to run on iPad and Android tablets, which could be what Microsoft means when it keeps saying "Office will work across Windows Phone, iOS and Android". And whatever Microsoft has planned might be delayed or cancelled over arguments with Apple over whether they get a cut of Office 365 subscriptions for Exchange and Office licences for Windows and Mac sold through iOS apps.
As expected, Microsoft will retire its Messenger IM service in favour of Skype in the spring (except in China, probably because of concerns that the government often discusses blocking the service). You can already merge your Microsoft and Skype accounts by logging into Skype with your Microsoft account (and you can still send messages to friends on Messenger and Facebook) but at some point that will become the only option.
Given the Facebook and Messenger integration in Windows Phone 7.5 and 8, we expect that will coincide with the full release of Skype for Windows Phone (and possibly even an update to Windows Phone to make it all work together). The good news; there will be special offers to make the move more palatable - maybe free Skype minutes like those on offer with some Office 365 accounts.
4. Xbox 720 and Xbox Loop
Another year, another set of rumours about the new Xbox. After seven years, we definitely expect Microsoft to launch a new Xbox late in 2013 and we really hope it includes the Forteleza Kinect Glasses project we've heard about, which seems to combine Google Glasses-style augmented reality with 3D screens.
The $299 price that's been suggested probably isn't for what we're still calling the Xbox 720 for convenience (although it might be the Xbox8 and the internal codename is Durango) which might be based on ARM or x86 chips, possibly with PowerPC chips to run existing Xbox games.
The cheaper model is rumoured to be a set-top box based on Windows 8 for playing casual games and running the kind of entertainment services (like Netflix and BBC iPlayer) that are already on Xbox 360, in something that doesn't look so out of place in the living room if you're not a Halo fan. Think midway between Xbox and Windows Media Center…
Like the rumoured Surface Book touch Ultrabook, AMD-based Surface Pro 2 and smaller Qualcomm-powered Surface RT 2, this was suggested by tipster and "social experimenter" @MSnerd. CEO Steve Ballmer has said that Microsoft will "obviously" make more hardware "where we see important opportunities to set a new standard" and thanks to the job adverts TechRadar discovered back in August, we know Microsoft is working on a second generation of Surface tablets so we'll see new models. Other rumours say Microsoft is ramping up its own manufacturing and distribution facilities, which you need when you're a "devices and services" company rather than a software developer.
What we're not sure about is the specific hardware Microsoft will use or the exact products we'll see (we're similarly a little sceptical about the often-rumoured Surface Phone).
Microsoft bought giant touchscreen maker Perceptive Pixel this year and CEO Jeff Han is hard at work in Redmond, probably on cheaper versions of the 80" touchscreen system that businesses can use with Windows 8 and Kinect for video conferencing or visualising data – or it could be an all-in-one PC for the home. We expect new Surfaces will come later rather than sooner in the year and run Windows Blue.
6. Windows Blue
If you have a new Surface every year (to compete with the new iPad every year), you need an update to Windows RT to go on it. Full updates to Windows 8 will probably still come every 2-3 years but we expect to see annual updates of Windows RT (and WinRT on Windows 8) that are cheap or even free.
The project codename is Windows Blue, according to rumours, and we expect to see the first release in the autumn with the next Surface models.
7. Something we know nothing about
Given how much better the company has got at keeping secrets, we're expecting at least one big surprise from Microsoft that we haven't heard about yet.
Perhaps the "ground-breaking hardware, software and experiences across computer vision, machine learning, human-computer interaction, image and video processing, networking and graphics" that the team behind Kinect is building to "revolutionize consumer electronic devices" according to a recent job advert. That might be Kinect 2 and Kinect Glasses, or it might be something completely different.
You know the scenario: a friend or family member got an iPad or iPad mini as a gift this week. Now they want to know what to do with the pretty slab of aluminum and glass. The App Store can be an overwhelming place, with programs that can transform the iPad into a word processor, a MIDI instrument, or a 3D gaming machine. That variety can be daunting if you are sampling the App Store for the very first time, but here's a place to start for those new to tablets.
We chose a few popular categories that cover some of the most common usage scenarios, then listed the top app in each that we would recommend to a friend. In some categories, we also mention alternatives that might appeal to those with more specialized tastes. (If you got a Nexus 7 or other Android tablet this holiday season, we have recommendations for you, too.)
Image editor
The iPad's screen is great for editing images, and photo buffs have no dearth of options for editing images while on the go. However, Google's Snapseed (free) is our top recommendation for editing images. It includes the standard editing controls like brightness, contrast, saturation, and color balance, along with tools that are common on mobile devices, like vintage-style filters and grungy borders.
Snapseed also has a nice touch-centric interface, with most effects adjusted by sliding left or right. Localized editing is also available for some adjustments, and some effects and filters can be adjusted using a "random" shuffle button for infinite variations. Sharing options include Google+, Facebook, and Twitter, but you can also send a photo to other apps registered to accept image input, such as Instagram or Photoshop Touch.
Another good option is Apple's own iPhoto ($4.99), which has a unique editing interface that also plays well with the iPad's touch input. In addition to editing, iPhoto also includes additional organizing features, the ability to create special online galleries replete with themes and other design elements, and integration with iPhoto on the desktop.
Users that already live and die by Photoshop might also consider Adobe's Photoshop Touch ($9.99), which can integrate with the desktop version via the company's Creative Cloud subscription service.
Text editor
Text editors are also a hot category for the iPad. Whether you feel at home with the on-screen touch keyboard or carry around an external keyboard, plenty of writers appreciate the iPad's small size and portability for writing whenever and wherever inspiration strikes.
Though Senior Apple Editor Jacqui Cheng prefersWriting Kit ($4.99), I would recommend iA Writer ($0.99) instead. The program has a simple and clean interface, supports Markdown for simple formatting that easily converts to HTML, and can sync files via iCloud and Dropbox.
If you need full-featured word processor, Apple's Pages ($9.99) is an excellent option, with support for lots of text formatting and styles, images, and other advanced layout options. It can also import or export Word-compatible files, a must for those working in most office environments.
Cloud storage
Apple already gives every iOS device user a free iCloud account, which can be used to sync certain data between iOS devices. It also syncs data between apps if you use a Mac. However, for any type of file syncing outside of Apple's somewhat limited iCloud APIs, Dropbox (free) should fit the bill for most users. The iOS app was recently updated with improved syncing controls and photo viewing. Dropbox also offers integrated storage syncing for OS X, Windows, and Linux, and many apps (like the aforementioned iA Writer) use Dropbox as a cloud syncing option in addition to—or instead of—iCloud.
News
You can of course use Safari to browse your favorite news sources online or download specialized reading apps from The Economist (free) or The New York Times (free). But sometimes it's better to have the news aggregated and presented in a more digestible form.
If you prefer to get a curated list of the most interesting news about your favorite topics, then Flipboard (free) is the app for you. The highly visual, magazine-like presentation looks great on the iPad, you can check out stories recommended by Flipboard staff, and it's easy to share great finds via Facebook and Twitter integration.
If you'd rather quickly browse headlines from all your favorite sites, an RSS feed reader might be a better choice. Reeder ($4.99) integrates with Google's Reader service, easily syncing with a desktop version. It also offers a number of sharing options, including sending articles to services like Evernote and Readability.
Messaging
The iPad comes equipped with the Messages app, which can communicate with other iPads, iPhones, and Macs using Apple's iMessages protocol. And FaceTime handles video chats with your friends that are in the Apple fold. But if you use other common chat protocols, such as AIM or Gtalk, you'll need a separate app.
Some chat services have their own dedicated apps (such as AIM, Yahoo, and Facebook), but why not use a single app that can use all popular services at once? For that, Verbs IM ($0.99) is a good value. It handles AIM/iChat, Facebook, and GTalk, and it has a clean, easy-to-use interface.
(Users that need wider service support—especially international services like Sina Weibo, VKontakte, or Mamba.ru—might instead check out IM+ Pro [$0.99].)
While Verbs IM will take care of text chats, Skype for iPad (free) is your go-to service for voice or video chats outside of FaceTime. The mobile app works just as well with Skype users on the desktop as it does with other mobile users.
Music
There are lots of options for listening to music outside of your own iTunes library. Streaming services are a great fit for mobile devices since you can access a large library of music without having to buy tracks or albums and sync them via iTunes. Spotify (free) is among our favorite services, and US users can listen to streaming "radio" for free. You can also easily share your listening habits with Facebook friends or log data with Last.fm. An additional premium subscription gives you access to playlist syncing and offline listening.
But the iPad is also a great device for making music. Even if you aren't an experienced musician, Apple's GarageBand ($4.99) includes a virtual orchestra and a library of pre-made loops for building a song that's your very own. Those with even a rudimentary understanding of music theory can record original compositions using a combination of real or virtual instruments, mixing down an almost limitless number of tracks into the next hit song.
Games
Games are hard to recommend, since not all types of games appeal to everyone. However, iOS is a formidable gaming platform for gamers of all ages and preferences, so we'll just pick a few of our favorites to get started.
If there were a first game we would recommend for almost anyone, it's probably Words With Friends HD (free with ads or $0.99 without). The artwork is stunning on a Retina display, the rules are similar to Scrabble, and tons of people play it; you should be able to find a friend to play with easily enough. Words With Friends can also optionally match you up with friends or strangers alike with similar skill levels—it's no fun regularly getting schooled by your friend's mom who happens to have a PhD in English, trust me.
A few other casual favorites are worth mentioning. If you really like word games, definitely check out Letterpress (free); it's a novel take on word games that sort of mashes up Scrabble and Boggle in a one-on-one match to test your vocabulary mettle. If retro 8-bit arcade games appeal to you, consider The Incident ($0.99)—its infectious NES-style soundtrack alone is worth the purchase price. Plants vs Zombies HD ($0.99) is a great tower defense style game that blends a bit of action and strategy with great artwork and tongue-in-cheek humor. And Ticket to Ride ($6.99), a game centered on building a railroad in turn-of-the-century America, has to be the best board game adaptation ever to grace an iOS device.
If you consider yourself a serious gamer attracted to action and awesome 3D graphics, Infinity Blade II ($2.99) is a great place to start. The touch-based fighting controls are pretty easy to use, if hard to master. The half-fantasy, half-sci-fi backstory is interesting, the weaponry options are vast, and the game has enough puzzles and mysteries to keep you going for hours on end.
Weather
Unlike the iPhone, the iPad doesn't include a native weather app. You can see basic weather information in Notification Center, but that's it. Fortunately, the lack of an official Apple app has encouraged several developers to try and fill the void. Our recommendation is AccuWeather for iPad (free), which includes a full complement of current weather data from AccuWeather.com, along with hourly and 15-day forecasts, satellite maps, and iCloud syncing of preferences between iOS devices.
Some may find the ads a little bothersome, but don't fret: there are dozens of other options in the App Store, both paid and free.
E-reading
One popular use for a tablet is reading e-books, and Apple knows it. The integrated Newsstand automatically collects apps for subscribing to and reading your favorite magazines and newspapers, for instance. And iBooks (free) is an absolute must-download. Not only does it allow you to browse and buy standard e-books as well as enhanced e-texts from the iBookstore, it also handles standard, DRM-free ePub and PDF files as well.
(If you've gotten an iPad after using a Nook or Kindle e-ink device, you can get dedicated apps for accessing your existing content from Barnes & Noble or Amazon, respectively.)
If you like your nonfiction filled with tons of useful rich media, though, definitely give Inkling (free) a try. Inkling books are geared towards learning, so they include tons of interactive content like images, interactive graphs, videos, and more; some programming books also include an integrated interpreter to try code samples live as you read. Books can be purchased from Inkling's website, and since the format is built around standards like HTML5 and JavaScript, you can also read Inkling books on the desktop via any modern browser.
Just a start
Of course, the App Store has far more available than the handful of apps we recommend here, but the list should help tablet newcomers get up to speed with finding, installing, and launching quality apps. Once they're comfortable doing so, it's time to truly start exploring.
Ars readers, what other apps would you recommend to new users?
Know someone who emerged from this holiday season with a new tablet in hand—and they now want your advice on what to do with it? An Android device is only as good as the apps you install, so we've drawn up a listed of some top Android apps for tablet newbies.
The apps we've chosen below are not necessarily new or edgy, but we've field-tested them all and find them solid choices for a wide variety of users wanting to get started with some basic tablet tasks. (See our iPad version as well.)
The Google Play store is not overflowing with powerful image editing applications—there are many more apps that will let you pop clip-art cats or Eiffel Towers into your pictures in lieu of doing a simple crop. Fortunately, the recent Google acquisition Snapseed takes itself seriously enough to forego the word art and gives you the essentials like cropping and adjusting exposure, saturation, contrast, and brightness, as well as tools for selective adjust and an "autocorrect button." There are a handful of modest photo effects that are not too cheesy.
Snapseed allows you to pull in photos to edit from cloud services like Box or Dropbox, which can be handy if you tablet is stuck with only a front-facing single-megapixel camera. Honorable mention goes to Pixlr Express, which Google recommended on its list of must-have Android apps for 2012. Its controls aren't quite as granular, but it has more creative options that you can't find in Snapseed, like the ability to add and control color splashes into black-and-white photos.
DroidEdit is by far the most flexible of the the text editors we tried. It's not much to look at, but the options available inside the app make it suitable for both coding and writing. Line wrap can be turned on and off, you can search and replace text, and there's a "writer mode" that turns off autocorrect and turns on a spell-checker. The app has a number of language syntaxes available (C/C++, C#, CSS, LaTex, Perl, Python, and many more). You can change the color scheme of the app to one of the available defaults or set your own and change the font size, but the font style is fixed. Even if you're not a coder, DroidEdit is still a capable and handy little text editor, on the level of Notepad++ for Windows.
When it comes to managing text files, you can have multiple files open at once, and the app allows you to create new folders in the file management system when saving (a feature that's rarer than it should be). The app also provides access to Android's share menu, so you can easily move you file to places including Evernote, Google Drive, Gmail,and Dropbox.
There are two versions of DroidEdit, one of which is free and runs a small text ad in the bottom right corner of the screen, which annoyingly changes every few seconds. We'd get a facial tic, having to sort-of look at that while writing. Fortunately, the paid version of DroidEdit is only $1.99 and has no ads.
It's hardly a surprise that Google, what with its cloud-based service proficiency, has come from behind with Drive to unseat older and wiser competitors like Dropbox and Box. The app works particularly well on the tablets, with useful options like the ability to create new Google files (a doc or a spreadsheet) right in the app, or sort contents by date or name.
Because Google Docs is now essentially part and parcel to Drive, the Drive app allows you to both open and edit documents without having to hop over to another app. This isn't a flawless process; for instance, when we uploaded a text file from DroidEdit to Drive, we have let it convert to Docs format to edit in Drive. If we don't, tapping the file in Drive will prompt us to open it in another of the text editing apps we have installed.
Drive comes preinstalled on some tablets, so you don't even have to open the Google Play store to get the best of the cloud storage experiences. If you're looking for a bit more security than Drive can provide, that's SpiderOak's strong suit, though its mobile apps usually leave something to be desired.
The duel for our hearts between Pocket and Instapaper is a remarkably close one. Pocket, an evolution of the tool formerly known as Read it Later, just barely edges out Instapaper for its ability to handle images and videos with a little more grace.
If this category were simply for choosing a reading app, this would be a dead heat. Both Instapaper and Pocket allow for resizing and changing fonts, changing color schemes, and have seemingly useless brightness tuners. Pocket's font sizes extend farther down into the smaller sizes; Instapaper offers more font choices, the ability to change line spacing, and more granularity for column width. Both allow users to perform bulk actions on their content; Pocket offers tags for organizing, while Instapaper offers folders.
But Pocket allows users to save videos and images and view them within the app. We don't see ourselves using Pocket for images, but we've saved videos to Instapaper a fair few times, knowing it was little better interface-wise than sending ourselves a link in e-mail. Pocket doesn't cache the video for offline viewing the way both Pocket and Instapaper will create offline versions of articles for reading, but we appreciate not having to redirect the app to its own browser, or relocate to Chrome, just to watch a video.
imo.im (free)
Walk away, AIM app. Go home, Facebook Messenger. Imo.im is able to handle both types of these accounts, in addition to Skype, Google Talk, and Steam. There's also an option for Myspace, in case you just can't let go.
When you provide imo with your account information for the above services, it will display each entry along with an on/off switch to let you log in or out. If you're logged into more than one account at a time, imo displays all contacts in one combined tab, while a second tab holds your past chats. The app offers options to log conversations on imo.im.
With some messaging apps in the past, we've had problems where one or the other will hijack messages exclusively, rather than letting it ring through to any locations where you may be logged in. Thankfully, imo.im doesn't do this. Instead, when you receive an initial message, imo.im will display it on the tablet, but won't continue threading the conversation through itself if you answer somewhere else. Your mileage may vary depending on the service, but we haven't had this problem with AIM, GTalk, or Facebook chat.
Music: Spotify or Rdio (free to try, $9.99 a month subscription required after)
To be entirely honest, none of the apps for the major streaming music services have really been optimized for Android tablets—they're made for phones first, and it shows in their sparse layouts and overabundant whitespace. For this category, then, the content is probably more important than the apps themselves, and both Spotify and Rdio give you plenty to listen to (our recent shootout between the two will give you more insight into each service's social features and tie-ins to their respective desktop clients).
Honorable mention: The downside to both Spotify and Rdio is that, after your trial period has expired, each will want $9.99 a month to grant you access to the service on your phones and tablets. We think that for most people that is a price worth paying, but if you want something a little more freePandora is still a good choice if you don't mind the advertisements.
There are plenty of touchscreen games we could recommend here, but rather than talking up Fruit Ninja or some other staple we'll be kicking it old school with one of those timeless time-wasters: Solitaire.
Of the many, many versions of this game available in the Google Play store, MobilityWare's Solitaire is the best—it's clean, simple, and optimized for tablet screens in a way that some of the other available versions aren't. The biggest drawback is probably the full-screen ads that run in between games, especially since there's no in-app purchase or separate version of the app that can be used to disable them. They don't ruin the experience, but they are annoying.
If regular old Klondike Solitaire doesn't get your blood pumping, MobilityWare also offers similarly excellent (and free-but-ad-supported) versions of FreeCell and Spider Solitaire.
Honorable mention: It's an unfortunate fact that Android's game library still lags behind the iTunes Store—if a developer can only target one mobile OS they generally choose Apple's, and the games that do appear on multiple platforms often appear on the iPad or iPhone first.
The situation is slowly improving, though. One of the most recent iOS ports to hit Google Play is the $4.99 Eufloria HD, a laid-back take on the real-time strategy game genre, but if you're looking for something quicker to pick up and play there's still nothing better than Halfbrick's Jetpack Joyride.
The Nexus tablets include Google Chrome as their default browser, and for good reason: it's a great browser that renders pages accurately, sticks to a vigorous update schedule, and can sync bookmarks, open tabs, and other information with its desktop counterparts. If you've got a non-Nexus tablet, you can easily switch from the stock browser to Chrome by downloading it from Google Play (as long as your tablet is running Ice Cream Sandwich or Jelly Bean, anyway).
Honorable mention: Firefox for Android is also solid contender, and if you use Firefox on the desktop it will also sync your data. Mozilla is also running some interesting experiments in the beta versions of the browser, one of which is an HTML5-focused app store.
Traveling in the winter can make you acutely aware of the weather in a way that you aren't in your day-to-day life, and apps that tell you whether you can weather that weather are of the essence.
The one we like best on a tablet's screen is the free ad-supported app from AccuWeather.com. It's got a nice, big, readable interface, and it's easy to swipe or tap a button to pull up hourly or 15-day forecasts, maps, and videos. The animations aren't as smooth as they might be, but the fact that the app has been updated specifically for 7-inch and 10-inch screens puts it ahead of the rest of the pack. Notifications for severe weather and other configurable alerts are also available, as are a couple of different widget sizes can be set to give you information at a glance.
As in the music app discussion, the content available through an e-book app is a very important part of the discussion. Unlike music apps, however, you're going to spend a lot of time in these apps actually reading books, and a poorly-optimized tablet app is harder to forgive.
In both of these respects, Amazon's Kindle app has the edge. The app itself has improved greatly since we looked at it in our Nexus 7 review, in large part because Amazon added new, smaller font options that make books look much better on 7-inch and 10-inch tablet screens. It goes without saying that the size of Amazon's e-book library remains unmatched, at least if you can stomach the DRM.
The Android app still lacks a couple of features available in iOS and on the Kindle Fire—the X-Ray feature, which allows you to look through a book to see all of the occurrences of certain words and names, is probably the most glaring omission—but reading Kindle books on an Android tablet is a much better experience now than it was even a couple of months ago.
But let me back up for a second. Before the release of Windows 8 on October 26, I tested Windows 8 on tablets only, such as the Intel-based Samsung slate that Microsoft sold in its stores. And I was impressed with Metro.
That was then. Windows 8 Pro 64-bit is now installed on my Dell Adamo laptop. And I rarely venture into the Metro UI unless if I'm forced to.
Of course if you're one of the relative few who have a tablet like the Samsung slate or Microsoft's Surface or a touch-screen laptop like Acer's Aspire S7, yeah, then Metro is front and center, as it should be.
But on a traditional laptop it's problematic. That's why Apple, probably the biggest single force behind the rise of the touch interface, hasn't done something similar with its OSes.
Making iOS the launch point and default interface on Macs would not go over well, Steve Job's edict nixing the idea of touch on laptops notwithstanding.
So, Microsoft is going where Apple won't. Intel -- still Microsoft's single most important hardware partner -- is going there too, by the way. The chipmaker said recently that it has chosen Windows 8 "as the standard operating system for Ultrabooks and tablets in our enterprise environment."
But I don't think -- despite Microsoft's upbeat announcement about Windows 8 licenses -- the hundreds of millions of users out there with plain old PCs will warm to the concept of a touch-based launch UI.
Acer's president, Jim Wong, stated this concern rather bluntly to Digitimes this week. The Windows 8 interface could "dramatically delay adoption by consumers," he said.
I'll expand on that by saying that until touch-based laptops and hybrids are both plentiful and cheap, Windows 8 may not gain much traction. And that may take a while.
Let me close on a positive note, though. I like Windows 8. It's faster than Windows 7 on my Dell and more stable. That's good enough for me.
And Microsoft should spend more time pitching these straightforward Windows 8 merits until touch becomes mainstream.
The Nokia Lumia 920 comes in yellow, red, white and black.
The Nokia Lumia 820 comes in red, white and black.
Both phones will be available at Omantel outlets in the country.
"We are delighted to offer the first Windows Phone 8 innovative smartphones from Nokia to our customers. This is yet another step from Omantel to ensure that our customers are not only enjoying innovative services but also the most advanced smartphones in the world," said Saleem Ahmed Abdullatiff General Manager of Marketing at Omantel Consumer Business Unit.
"We have launched a pre-order campaign end of last month to enable our customers to be the first to own these stunning devices where the first 100 buyers are provided with free Nokia Luna Bluetooth Headset and a Fatboy Wireless Charging Pillow. Moreover, Lumia smartphones come with free mobile broadband for six months of up to 1 GB per month," Saleem Abdullatiff added.
"Nokia is currently embarking on a journey of executing its winning smartphone strategy by delivering the latest Lumia range with Arabic language support in Oman. Following the significant demand for the international version of the Lumia range, we are confident the new Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 will be a milestone for the company as a whole," said Vithesh Reddy, General Manager, Nokia Lower Gulf.
"After seeing the enthusiastic response to the incredible innovation in the Nokia Lumia 920 and Nokia Lumia 820, we're eager for people to start experiencing the phones for themselves. We are focusing our efforts on working with partners like Omantel who recognize the value of that innovation, and who are committed to helping Lumia and the Windows Phone platform breakthrough in Oman," added Reddy.
PureView Technology - blurred and low-lit mobile photography becomes history The flagship Nokia Lumia 920 uses is able to take in five times more light than competing smartphones without using flash, making it possible to capture clear, bright pictures and video indoors and at night.
City Lens - new navigation experiences - the start of a new augmented reality experience The Nokia Lumia 920 also comes with Nokia City Lens, the latest addition to the Nokia location suite. By pointing the camera at a city street, City Lens overlays information about restaurants, shops, hotels and more on the surfaces of buildings, for the most intuitive way to explore surroundings.
Powered by Windows Phone 8 Windows Phone 8 provides a more personal smartphone experience, with a start screen that can be more easily rearranged to reflect individual priorities and new animated Live Tiles for real-time updates on the things that matter most. The ability to sync content between Windows Phone 8 smartphones.
Wireless charging Nokia also announced a range of wireless charging accessories at the launch. The Fatboy Recharge Pillow provides a fun way to recharge, while JBL introduced the JBL PowerUp Wireless Charging Speaker for Nokia, a wireless charging docking station with high quality audio in retro styling.
The Nokia Lumia 920 also comes with Nokia's largest ever battery (2000mAh) and, for the first time, built-in wireless charging for an easy, convenient way to get more out of every day.
The Nokia Lumia 820 The Nokia Lumia 820 is a stylish, mid-range smartphone that delivers high-end performance in a compact package. While the Nokia Lumia 820 has the same uni-body look and feel as the high-end Lumia smartphones, it comes with an exchangeable shell design. Exchangeable shells not only make it possible to select from a range of colors, but also to add wireless charging. Beneath the shell is room to insert a micro SD memory card.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)
One of the more unusual moments in Microsoft's retrospective of Windows Phone during 2012 from Todd Brix on the Microsoft blog was the avoidance of saying the 'big' number. He posted that 75,000 apps had been published during the year, but it's the next line that is classic burying the lede:
Over the last year we've certified and published over 75,000 new apps and games (more than doubling the catalog size) and over 300,000 app updates.
Yes, the Windows Store has passed 150,000 applications, but Microsoft is not making any fuss over it. The psychological 100,000 app mark was passed earlier in the year, and if Microsoft is of the opinion that they don't need to shout out every app milestone, then I am in agreement with them.
The hurdle of 'volume' has been overcome, the next step up is 'variety'.
There's no doubt that Microsoft's mobile platform has a decent level of traction with some developers, but it's an area that is going to need a lot of work during 2013. Microsoft needs to get the right developers onto the platform.
Look at some of the key apps on a mobile platform. Both the Facebook and Twitter applications for Windows Phone (as opposed to the integration into the Windows Phone People hub) are lacking many features of the web services, and lag significantly behind the official Android and iOS clients when new features are announced.
Then you start finding the gaps. Services like Instagram and Dropbox are notably by their absence. Many services have incredibly basic apps on the platform, such as Evernote, Yelp, and Urbanspoon, paying lip service to support but relegating the platform to a mental second division. Spotify is another interesting case – a Windows Phone 7 client was coded and released, but as it stands there's no indication of a Windows Phone 8 client coming to the new handsets.
And when you do have new services released, such as Facebook's 'Poke', they are invariably on the two mobile platforms with the largest market shares… not Windows Phone.
Microsoft can just about negate the argument of app volume, but they still need to get developers thinking Windows Phone in 2013. That means changing two perceptions. The first is the volume of users on the platform, the second is showing developers that the platform is financially viable.
Assuming that the increased sales of Windows Phone 8 devices that Steve Ballmer is promoting holds up during 2013, Microsoft and the hardware manufacturers need to be shouting about numbers as much as possible. Will they be as large as Android? No. As large as iOS? Probably not. But hard and fast numbers, accelerating sales curves, and a large addressable audience need to be something that is settled in the minds of everyone, rather than being based on a few assumptions and extrapolations. Good PR and constant marketing needs to be going on here.
Making the platform financially viable is harder. It's good that various tools are being made available to boost conversions from trial to full price, to make in-app purchasing a simple and straightforward process, and that suitable options are available for advertising in the mobile applications. It's the mindset of the start-ups where Redmond needs to get to work. Quite simply, when you begin a start-up that looks to mobile, you look to Android and iOS. You don't look at Windows Phone. If there's one New Year's Resolution Microsoft needs to make, it's to get Windows Phone heavily into the world of web start-ups.
That could mean making strategic investments with these companies to ensure they develop for Windows Phone, perhaps taking minimal stock to ensure that their platform as the applications. Maybe a 'tiger team' inside Redmond so start-ups can outsource the Windows Phone client at a fixed and predictable cost?
Windows Phone has a good hardware base, but now it needs to be aggressive and become an established part of the entire mobile landscape. Whatever it takes.
Like Nintendo's Wii U game console, the Ouya (that's "OOH-yuh") has an unusual name and even more unusual hardware. The console is roughly the size of a Rubik's cube, and is powered by Android, Google's open-source operating system that's normally found on smartphones and tablets.
Ouya's makers, who are preparing the console for its commercial launch, encourage interested gamers to pop the case open and use it in electronics projects ... or even to write their own games for it. Especially if they're among the 1,200 who are about to receive their own clear plastic Ouya developer consoles.
Not exactly a finished product
The limited-edition consoles, which have been shipped out to developers already, are not designed for playing games on. They don't even come with any.
Rather, the point of these consoles is so that interested Android developers can write games for the Ouya, which will then be released to gamers when the console launches to the public. Fans who pledged at least $1,337 to Ouya's record-breaking Kickstarter project will get one, and while they're not quite suited for playing games on -- "we know the D-pad and triggers on the controller still need work," Ouya's makers say -- the clear plastic developer consoles serve as a preview of what the finished product will look like, and a reminder of Ouya's "openness."
You keep using that word ...
In the food and drug industries, terms like "organic" and "all-natural" are regulated so that only products which meet the criteria can have them on their labels. In the tech world, however, anyone can claim that their product is "open," for whatever definition of "open" they like.
The term was popularized by the world's rapid adoption of open-source software, like Android itself, where you're legally entitled to a copy of the programming code and can normally use it in your own projects (like Ouya's makers did). But when tech companies say that something is "open," they don't necessarily mean that the code or the hardware schematics use an open-source license.
How Ouya is "open"
Ouya's makers have released their ODK, or developer kit, under the same open-source license as Android itself. This allows aspiring game developers to practice their skills even without a developer console, and to improve the kit however they want. The hardware itself is currently a "closed" design, however, despite the clear plastic case. The makers have expressed enthusiasm for the idea of hardware hackers using it in projects, and have said, "We'll even publish the hardware design if people want it," but so far they haven't done so.
What about the games?
The most relevant aspect of "openness" to normal gamers is that Ouya's makers say "any developer can publish a game." This model is unusual for the console world, where only select studios are allowed to publish their wares on (for instance) the PlayStation Network, but is more familiar to fans of the anything-goes Google Play store for Android. Several big-name Android developers -- including console game titan Square-Enix -- have already signed up to have their wares on the Ouya.
Preordered Ouya game consoles (the normal ones, not the developer edition) will ship in April. They will cost $99 once sales are opened to the general public.
JaredSpurbeckis an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.
